


Electric

by iridescentglow



Category: The Fosters (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, Futurefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1788697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentglow/pseuds/iridescentglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Futurefic. Brandon and Callie have spent seven years doing the right thing and acting like brother and sister, but the feelings still haven’t gone away. When Brandon goes to see Callie play her first solo show, it’s time for them both to stop pretending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Electric

The pictures on the wall of the Foster house tell a shadow story. It starts at Mariana’s Quinceañera, the camera catching Callie as she glances at Brandon, her eyes locked momentarily onto his. It continues in the pictures of them at their moms’ wedding: freshly kissed and forced apart; their expressions blurry, their body language awkward. It’s there in the photo from Adoption Day: while everyone else looks at the camera, Brandon looks at Callie.

The official story told by the pictures on the wall is a simple one: Callie and Jude folded into the Foster family; a happily-ever-after in photo form. The other story is not one that most people would notice.

There’s the way that, in all of the posed Christmas shots, Brandon never, ever stands next to Callie. He never sits beside her at the Thanksgiving table. Even at their shared high school graduation, they’re pictured separately. Brandon and his moms. Callie and her moms. A shrewd eye might wonder why Brandon and Callie seem to belong to the same family but not to each other’s family.

*

“I don’t want to wear it!” said Alex, throwing the tie on the floor.

Brandon sighed and bent to pick it up.

“You have to,” he said.

“ _Why_?”

“Because it’s the Fourth of July barbecue. You have to wear a tie and make nice with the neighbors. It’s tradition.”

“I hate tradition!”

“Me too, buddy, me too,” said Brandon, as he looped the tie around his brother’s neck, gently pulling the fabric into a knot.

“I don’t want to talk to people,” said Alex. “Old Mr Charleston smells like moldy cheese.”

“It’s just for a couple hours. You can be nice for a couple hours. You can pretend for a couple hours.”

“I don’t want to pretend!”

Alex yanked off his tie once more. This time, he tied it around his head and ran off, giving an almighty war cry. Brandon watched him go, too tired to run after his brother, who was a six-year-old ball of energy. In fairness, his moms’ instruction had only been to make sure Alex wore the tie; they hadn’t specified in which manner he wore the tie.

*

When Brandon went outside, he found the Fosters’ yard was already packed with people – neighbors, distant friends, extended family – and the air was full of stilted conversation and forced laughter. The women’s high heels sank into the grass; the men fidgeted with their ties as the day grew hotter.

Brandon didn’t know why his moms bothered with the charade of the Fourth of July barbecue year after year. Most of their neighbors hated them. (They hated them partly for the obvious reasons, but partly also because of the fateful day when Jesus had tried to teach Alex basketball in the street, resulting in three broken windows at three separate houses.)

As Brandon headed to the grill for some food, he scanned the crowd on automatic. He spotted her immediately – over by the roses, talking to Mariana – and so he veered in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, he veered straight into Old Mr Charleston, who really did smell like moldy cheese.

The day ebbed away slowly, each second feeling sticky and overlong. Brandon worked his way through the crowd, having conversation after conversation, all of which began to blur together. Every single one seemed to contain the same questions and the same answers.

“ _Yep… cum laude… thank you… no, not music… history… thank you… yeah, very proud… oh, law school… thank you… tough, but I like it… oh, no one special… yeah, still looking… still looking…_ ”

Finally, as the sun slipped low in the sky, the crowds began to thin. Brandon realized he’d run out of excuses not to say hi to her. Slowly, he approached across the backyard, allowing himself the chance to look at her – really _look_ at her – for a few seconds.

There was her halo of tangled hair, clipped back for the occasion – her hair, which probably didn’t smell like coconuts, not anymore. The way she stood, still a little hunched, still a little wary, but taller now, less self-conscious. The way she frowned and smiled with every part of her face; every reaction lit brightly in her brown eyes.

He reached out and touched her elbow, then drew his hand away.

“How’s life in Frisco?” he asked.

She turned to look at him, smiling that familiar, scrunchy-faced smile.

“Well, the plan to round up and kill everyone who calls it ‘Frisco’ is in full force,” she said. “My new apartment’s in Oakland, anyhow. Less cachet, more sun.”

“Callie has her first solo show next week,” Stef, who stood beside Callie, said to Brandon.

“What happened to the band?” asked Brandon.

Callie made a face.

“They kinda… went in a… baroque direction. Like. Baroque punk.”

Brandon laughed.

“What does _that_ mean?” he asked.

“Uh, they met a guy who plays the cello…? I don’t know.” Callie rolled her eyes, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. “Anyway, it wasn’t working out. I decided the world is ready for me to do the solo thing. Just me and my guitar and my crippling stage fright.”

“Oh, shush,” said Stef. “You’ll be great. Sorry Mama and I can’t make it.”

“It’s _really_ not a big deal,” said Callie. “It’s a half-hour slot at a bar. There isn’t even a stage. You won’t be missing much.”

“It’s your big debut!” said Stef. “I wish we could come. Mariana’s stopping by, though, isn’t she?”

“Nah. She has a job interview that day. Getting ready for the big move to Phoenix.”

Brandon cut in: “That’s actually happening?”

“Oh yeah,” Callie said wryly. “She and Zac are talking weddings.”

“Seriously? They _just_ started dating again,” said Brandon.

He’d heard bits and pieces about Mariana’s big reunion with Zac. All those years apart and then one night she’d sent him an ill-advised, post-midnight email. A flurry of words had followed and then she’d gone to visit him in Arizona. One weekend had turned into _every_ weekend. Now she was planning on moving out there to be with Zac full time.

“She says all the old feelings came back. Says she feels sixteen again.”

“God,” Brandon mumbled. “I don’t think I ever want to feel sixteen again.”

Callie caught his eye and then looked away. Maybe he was imagining it, but he thought her smile looked a little sad.

“Aw, Callie,” said Stef, “I didn’t realize none of us were coming to your show.”

“Not. A. Big. Deal,” Callie muttered. She rolled her eyes; an unconscious _Mom!-Just-stop_ gesture.

“I could come,” Brandon said suddenly.

“Really?”

Callie’s voice was neutral. Brandon responded just as neutrally:

“I think my boss at the firm—who still doesn’t actually know my name, come to think of it. I think he could do without me for a couple days. Summer associates aren’t exactly indispensable.”

“That sounds great, B,” said Stef. “Fly the Foster colors for us all.” She leaned in to give him a quick squeeze around the shoulders. “Take lots of pictures, love.”

There was the shortest of pauses before Callie replied. Not long enough to be awkward. Not long enough for Stef to notice. But just long enough for Brandon to wonder if he should be regretting his offer. He felt a ripple pass between him and Callie. Then she spoke up.

“That sounds great,” she said.

*

As they drove away from the airport in Callie’s beat-up car, she asked him:

“Flight okay?”

“Yeah,” he said.

The radio was playing loud enough that they didn’t need to talk anymore. So they didn’t talk. 

Brandon wondered belatedly if he should have changed his clothes. He’d come straight from the office and still wore a suit, crumpled after the two hours he’d spent folded into an airplane. He loosened his tie – a red-and-blue dog-tooth monstrosity of a thing that his dad had given him – and yanked it off. Then he sneaked a look at Callie in the driver’s seat. She wore a floaty, yellow dress with scuffed-black, stomp-you-to-death boots and a big, silver necklace that looked as heavy as chainmail.

It didn’t feel like the car’s air-con was working. As he shoved his tie into his bag, Brandon found it hard to catch a breath in the hot, sticky air of the car.

*

The quiet of Callie’s apartment seemed wrong after the noise of the radio in the car. Callie drummed her fingers idly on her leg, as if she could still hear the music.

“So this is it,” she said.

Most weeks, Brandon played poker with Jesus and some of his buddies at his houseshare in San Diego. He’d spent a chilly weekend sleeping on Jude’s dorm room floor in damp Portland. Mariana had given him a FaceTime tour of her apartment in Palo Alto the first week she moved in. When people asked if he was close with his brothers and sisters, he always said _yes_ immediately. It was the truth and it was also a lie. Because he’d never been to Callie’s apartment in Oakland – not this new one, nor any of her previous ones.

Now, standing in its doorway, he found that her apartment was completely, utterly, heartbreakingly _hers_. There were splashes of color – abstracts in bold primary colors – that contrasted with the muted tones of the black and white photographs, which were tacked so close together that they overlapped. Cityscapes and children laughing. A hundred different lives captured by her camera. The apartment smelled like her, too: sandalwood, eucalyptus, something faintly floral he couldn’t place – and, yes, beneath it all, notes of coconut. 

Callie’s apartment was her fortress. It was also incredibly small. He couldn’t help but laugh.

“Where’s the bed?” he asked. “Or do you sleep curled up in the corner like a cat?”

“It… flips down,” she said, motioning.

“Seriously?”

“It’s what I can afford!”

The conversation was getting edgy – and not just because they were talking about money.

“Come on,” she said. “Dump your stuff. Let’s go get a beer.”

*

They drove to the bar with Callie’s amps and guitars strapped into the backseat like children. Again, the radio was their noisy companion.

At the entrance to the bar, Brandon’s eye was caught by a poster listing the billing for the evening, with Callie’s name right there in the center. He paused to take a picture of it with his phone, before he walked into the half-darkness of the bar.

Inside, Callie was immediately hailed by the girl behind the bar.

“Heyyy, who’s this?” the bartender asked.

“This is—” Callie paused infinitesimally. “This is Brandon.”

“Oh. Your brother!”

Brandon looked at the girl behind the bar carefully, charting her reaction. He was half-hoping to see a flash of deeper recognition at the name “Brandon”. Perhaps Callie had told her their real story. Perhaps she’d cried on her shoulder and shared this deepest of secrets. At this point in time, it felt like so few people knew the truth of their relationship – the layers of pretence were so thick – that it was almost like it had never happened at all. However, the girl just smiled benignly and Brandon told himself it wasn’t disappointment he felt.

As they ordered their drinks, more friends appeared to greet Callie. This was obviously her haunt. Introductions were repeated over and over and each time Brandon heard the words “Your brother?”, he felt worse. He realized he was on the lookout for The Boyfriend. There had to be one. A skinny artist guy, perhaps. Or a bearded grad student, studying something like Philosophy. Maybe he was an easy-going waiter who was a great lay.

Brandon soon learned that scrutinizing every guy in the bar was a quick way to drive himself insane. Callie was still nursing her first beer, but Brandon was near the bottom of his third.

“So I guess all your friends came out to see you play tonight?” Brandon asked. He hoped he sounded supportive and brotherly, not festering and slightly jealous.

“Oh please, they’re here every night,” said Callie. She raised her voice to be heard by a passing redhead whose name might have been Mar. “Any excuse.”

Maybe-Mar laughed and gave her the finger, walking toward her cute, tattooed girlfriend.

“What time are you playing?” asked Brandon.

“Ten,” she said. “Hopefully everyone will be good and drunk by then.”

“…Stop pretending like tonight is no big deal,” he said.

“It _isn’t_ a big deal.”

“It’s your first show. It is a big deal.”

“Fine,” she said, but her smile was hard. “Stop pretending like you don’t hate law school.”

The comment caught him off-guard. He’d only ever told Callie the official word on law school: great experience, challenging subject, exciting prospects.

“I don’t… hate it,” he said.

If he’d only been on his first or second beer – if Callie’s eyes hadn’t been boring into him – perhaps he would have left it at that. Instead, he sighed.

“If I hated it, it would be easier,” he said. “If I hated it, I’d _have_ to quit. But… it’s fine. Tedious, but fine.”

Callie shook her head, visibly exasperated.

“You know moms wouldn’t care if you quit,” she said.

“My dad would care,” he said. “If I can’t be a cop – and I am _so_ not cut out to be a cop – he wants me to be a public defender.”

They were both silent for a long moment. Brandon realized Callie was the first person with whom he’d shared his misgivings about law school. After a year of giving his parents a shiny, fake impression of it all, after a year of listening blankly to his excitable fellow students as they reeled off the names of top law firms like they were Ivy League schools, he’d finally told someone the underwhelming truth: that he was a half-hearted law student on his way to becoming a half-hearted lawyer.

“Gram is still devastated I didn’t go to college,” Callie said, taking a sip of her beer. “She’s always emailing me links to music programs. She sent me one in Delaware last week. _Delaware_. Music capital of the world, I guess. Or maybe she’s just desperate.”

“She sends me those links, too,” Brandon said with a snort. “God knows why.”

“You never think about it?” asked Callie.

Her voice was too casual and it made Brandon tense.

“No,” he said.

“You never think about piano at all?”

“No.”

Brandon pushed his stool back and stood up, mumbling something about the bathroom as he walked away from Callie. Of course he thought about piano. He thought about piano constantly. But thinking about it didn’t change the facts. He’d had countless sessions with physical therapists and piano teachers over the years and they’d all said the same thing. He’d have to work twice as hard to be half as good at piano. If the choice was between mediocrity or nothing, well… he’d chosen law school.

When he returned from the bathroom, Callie had been joined by a group of her friends. He ordered another beer and let them talk. Callie kept trying to catch his gaze and draw him into the conversation. But he said little, refusing to meet her eye. He just sat back and listened to stories of her life – a life that didn’t include him.

*

Later, when Callie’s timeslot approached, she tugged on his sleeve and said:

“Be my roadie?”

He shrugged and followed her out to the parking lot.

They spent the next few minutes hefting Callie’s equipment from her car to the roped-off corner of the bar that could optimistically be called the stage. When she lifted a keyboard out of the trunk of the car, he raised his eyebrows.

“This yours?” he asked.

“Someone was giving it away on Craigslist,” she said. “So. I’m teaching myself. A little.”

He turned away so he wouldn’t have to look at her expression, which was half-rueful, half-proud. He heaved the keyboard onto his shoulder, feeling its weight.

*

Callie shuffled onto the stage that wasn’t a stage. She was hunched and angular, in her chainmail and her floaty dress. A mess of nerves, a mass of contradictions. She strapped on her electric guitar and, over the clinking of drinks being lifted and the white noise of conversation, she began to play.

To Brandon’s ears, at least, everything else stopped. She captured the room from that first moment. And, when she stepped up to the mic and began to sing, her low, throaty voice set the air alight.

As the first song flowed into the second, Callie’s chin tilted upward. She smiled more. She poured herself into the music, her shoulders rolling, her hips swaying. The crowd roared – it was just her friends; tipsy and overenthusiastic – but she drank it in like it was a headline show at the Whisky.

This, Brandon was forced to realize, was Stef and Lena’s influence.

This Callie was their daughter. Born of their love. Not closed off, like Callie Jacob had once been, but open. Now, after seven years of being their daughter, she was vulnerable and ferocious and open to everything.

After a few songs, Callie shrugged off her electric guitar and took a seat on a stool. She adjusted the microphone and spoke into it wryly:

“If you’ve been waiting for a bathroom break, now’s the time.”

There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd and Callie bent to pick up an acoustic guitar. Brandon realized at once that it was his acoustic guitar. Hers. But also his.

“This one’s for my brother,” she said into the mic.

Brother. The word pierced Brandon.

“ _Hey Jude_ ,” she sang, “ _don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better…_ ”

Brandon knew relief was the wrong emotion to be feeling, but he didn’t care. The room took on a hushed quality as Callie sang them a lullaby. While she sang, Brandon remembered his moms’ instruction to take lots of pictures. He got out his phone and captured the way her lips smiled around the word _Jude_.

Taking pictures, he found, made it easier. He could remove himself from the situation – from his own feelings – just a little. Through a lens, Callie was less devastating. 

‘Hey Jude’ came to an end and Brandon photographed the crowd’s rapturous applause. The crowd was still clapping when Callie began to strum her guitar once more. She leaned close to the microphone and sang:

“ _I think we might be outlaws, I think I might be in love…_ ”

If the word ‘brother’ had pierced him, the word ‘love’ sliced clean through his heart.

Callie broke off to say, “I want to bring someone up to help me sing this one. Brandon…?”

Brandon’s first instinct was to turn and leave – he already felt a closed-up, suffocated feeling rising in his lungs – but it was too late. The crowd had begun to propel him toward the stage-that-wasn’t-a-stage; Callie’s well-meaning friends pushing Brandon toward her.

The worst thing was seeing her expression: sweet and eager and utterly untroubled, as if this was a treat for him and not a trauma. She smiled as the crowd clapped for him.

“This is Brandon’s song,” she said into the mic and the crowd clapped harder.

 _It’s not Brandon’s song_ , he wanted to scream. _It’s Callie’s song. That’s its name._

He ended up squeezed in beside her; awkward, too aware of his limbs. She gestured to the keyboard, smiled and said, “Play.”

“No,” he said in an undertone.

It was then that she seemed to finally realize that he wasn’t thrilled with the situation. Doubt crept into her expression, chased by desperation.

“Please,” she said.

This was not the place to be having this conversation. Brandon’s feeling of suffocation intensified. The crowd were stamping their feet now. He stumbled over to the keyboard.

It had been seven years since he’d played the song. Seven years of careful forgetting. But his fingers still remembered the notes. For the first few seconds, his fingers also remembered what it was to play piano. Then he felt the familiar spasm in his right hand, the blunt, useless feeling, as if his fingers belonged not to him but to someone else. It was a gargantuan effort to keep playing, to ignore the pain and make it to the bridge.

“ _Love, love, love is my crime_ ,” Callie sang, and he felt every word as if it was seared into his skin.

She paused before the next line and glanced over at him.

He leaned forward, into the microphone that was attached to the keyboard, and sang:

“ _So baby, come catch me and let’s do the time._ ”

*

“You guys were great!” Maybe-Mar said enthusiastically, half-shouting to be heard over the rock band that had replaced Callie on the stage-that-wasn’t-a-stage.

“You should do duets!” Mar continued. “Like… Sonny and Cher. Or… I can’t think of any brothers and sisters. Donny and Marie…?” She laughed.

Callie laughed, too, and sang, “ _I’m a little bit country, and I’m a little bit rock and roll…_ ”

Brandon, by contrast, did not laugh. As a group of them loitered at the back of the bar, he found he was just barely able to grit out a smile.

With every compliment from Callie’s friends, with every forced smile, he was getting angrier. Later, he might be forced to parse his feelings for deeper emotion, but for now, anger overrode everything else. Anger was a high. Anger was all that was keeping him on his feet.

“Hey, roadie, help me load up,” Callie said in his ear.

Reluctantly, he followed her out to the parking lot. They collected her equipment from where it had been stacked near the bar’s back door and began fitting it into her car. Brandon managed a minute of stony silence before he burst out:

“You shouldn’t have done that to me. I don’t play piano anymore. I can’t play.”

In the mostly-empty parking lot, which was quiet after the din of the bar, his words came out too loud. A pair of lumbering drunks paused to look at him, before lumbering on.

“Brandon, that’s bullshit,” said Callie. She was lifting one of her amps into the car and her back was to him, her voice muffled. “You could play if you tried. Maybe you wouldn’t be perfect anymore, but you could play.”

“I _can’t_. I don’t… want to!”

“That’s a lie! You love it. I know you still love it,” she said, still busying herself with loading the equipment.

As she spoke, Callie tried to wind up a power cord, but her hands were shaking and she kept messing up. Finally, she threw it on the ground in frustration and looked at him plainly.

“I don’t even know who _this guy_ is,” she said, gesturing to him. “Law school. Summer internship at some uptight office. Pretending it’s what you want to do with your life.”

In that moment, he saw himself as she saw him. Crumpled suit. Office-appropriate haircut. Newly shined shoes. Twenty-three going on forty and wishing his life away.

“People pretend,” he exclaimed, “that’s what they do! That’s how they make it through life!”

“No, they _don’t_.”

“Spare me, Callie. You’re pretending, too. Like music’s just a hobby. Like tonight’s no big deal. Treading water in some dive bar with your hipster friends. Scared to really try.” He paused, feeling the anger pulse inside of him. “We both pretend. You’re just better at it than me.”

She shook her head, but didn’t reply. She was visibly angry – too angry to speak.

_He kisses her then. And, with a growl, she kisses him back. He presses her against her car, feeling the crush of her breasts, the push of her hips against his, as they try simultaneously to erase all distance between them. Her fingers splay against the back of his neck and she musses his neatly-groomed hair. She opens her mouth against his and they kiss with frenzied passion._

The moment was so vivid in his imagination that he almost had trouble reconciling the reality of the moment. They were not kissing. They were arguing. And he still had one last grenade to hurl at her feet.

“You were the one who started this,” he said furiously. “I’m only doing what you wanted. You asked me to pretend. You _told_ me. You told me you’d only agree to the adoption if I was willing to pretend not to have feelings for you.”

He could almost see the flash of flames then, dawning realization lit bright and horrible in her eyes.

“That’s _not_ how it happened…” she said, stricken.

“It is. You can pretend otherwise. But that’s how it happened for me.”

Callie was silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, the anger had gone from her voice. She merely sounded hoarse, hollowed out.

“I guess I was lying,” she said, “I guess tonight really was a big deal for me. And I guess you fucking ruined it.”

*

They drove back to the Callie’s apartment in silence. He didn’t know why she didn’t turn the radio on, except that perhaps she wanted him to suffer the excruciating silence.

“You can drop me at a hotel,” he said at last, striving for an even tone of voice.

“No,” she said.

“Fine. You can drop me the airport. I’ll take whatever flight they have.”

“No.”

“Just let me out here, then. I’ll find a taxi.”

“No. I’m not gonna let you act like a petulant kid. I’m not gonna have Stef and Lena calling me up, asking why I can’t even spend a single evening with my brother.”

The silence resumed.

*

“Mine’s the right side,” she said coldly, as her living room transformed into a bedroom with the yank of a lever. The bed sank into the space, leaving perhaps a meter gap between its edges and the walls. Brandon wondered if he could sleep in the bathtub, before he remembered that Callie’s bathroom contained only a shower.

If he’d thought her frosty silence had been his punishment, he realized he’d been wrong. This, _this_ was his punishment. To sleep beside her, an arm’s length away, and not be able to touch her.

If they’d retired to bed talking and joking and laughing – if they’d still been pretending – it might have been bearable. But strip away all the pretence and what was there left? Just the thin line of her mouth and the tilt of her downward glance as she stepped out of the shower room and climbed into bed next to him.

He was all too aware of the sad, greedy way his eyes drank in the parts of her he didn’t usually get to see: the mole on the inside of her thigh, which was revealed by the pajama shorts she wore to bed; the curl of her shower-wet hair; the strong scent of coconut from her shampoo.

Strip away the pretence and all there remained was a flip-down bed and a pair of lovers who weren’t allowed to touch.

*

The next morning, he woke up early. While Callie slept on, Brandon slipped out of bed and out of her apartment. He wandered the nearby streets, looking for coffee. And, when he found it, he wandered some more, the heat of the takeout cup burning against his palm.

He felt the memory of the previous night like a hangover, but the bright morning light chased some of his melancholy away. He passed cafes and bars, a run-down library, a corner store, and a yoga emporium. (He felt certain that, if she were there with him, Callie would have had something to say about Yoga Paradise.) It made him feel closer to Callie, strangely, to see the neighborhood she called home; to imagine her walking these streets, stopping for coffee or to buy bread.

When he returned to her apartment, she was still sleeping. He allowed himself to watch her for a moment (or was it an hour?), even though it hurt him to do so. Then he leaned close and said softly:

“Hey, wake up.”

She shifted in bed, opened her eyes a fraction and then closed them again. She made a dolphin kick of a movement, turning over in bed, hiding from wakefulness.

“I have coffee,” he said.

She kicked at the sheets once more and made another effort to open her eyes. Finally, she gave the impression of rising out of sleep once and for all, propping herself up in bed and reaching groggily for the coffee that he proffered.

“I couldn’t decide between orange and blueberry muffins, so I bought both,” he said, holding up a paper bag.

“…Good call,” she said hoarsely, taking a sip of her coffee.

“I also bought a scone and a weird-looking thing that I don’t know what it is. But. It has chocolate in it.”

“Okay…”

When she reached for the paper bag – her fingers splayed over his – he didn’t let the bag go at once.

“So. This is an apology,” he said in a low voice.

She tugged the bag out of his grasp and opened it.

“How about I eat the mystery chocolate thing and then decide whether or not I forgive you?”

He smiled, relieved. “Sounds fair.”

Together, they sat cross-legged on the unmade bed and ate. Last night’s animosity showed itself only half-heartedly, when Callie refused to let Brandon steal even a bite of the mystery chocolate thing.

“I am sorry,” he said, as their pace of eating slowed.

She waved a chunk of blueberry muffin in the air, a dismissive action, and said:

“Forget it.”

“No, Callie, I’m serious. I’m sorry I ruined your big night.”

“There’ll be other shows.” She paused, frowning. “Maybe I’ll go to Delaware and get classically trained.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Maybe even she didn’t know yet.

“What time’s your flight?” she asked.

“Seven,” he said. “This evening. Don’t worry, I’ll get out of your way. Take BART or something.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, “don’t be an ass. You came to visit me. First time ever. So we’ll find something to do. I’ll show you the city.”

“This city? Because I already found the yoga place.”

“Which one? There are six within a half-mile radius.” She raised an eyebrow. “And then three blocks over is where you go to buy crack.”

“I was wondering where your local crack store was…”

She ignored his joke and said, “I’ll show you around San Francisco. You’ll love it.”

“Ah, Frisco,” he said.

“Seriously, stop calling it that.”

She smiled at him and he smiled back at her. Then, just like that, she kissed him and he kissed her back.

It wasn’t the fevered, tortured kissing that he’d imagined last night. They kissed as if it were something they did every day. Natural, unhurried, relaxed. Seven years later and his body still remembered hers; he reacted on instinct, drawing her close to him. Her warmth, her smell – she was still so familiar to him. Kissing her felt normal. Achingly so.

“You were right,” she murmured, between kisses. “About some things, anyway. Maybe I did ask you to pretend when I got adopted. Maybe I did my share of pretending, too. But let’s take a vacation from pretending. Just for today.”

And so they did. They slipped seamlessly into a different life. One that had been waiting there beneath the surface for the past seven years.

They lounged in bed until past noon. They finished off the muffins, both blueberry and orange. They talked – humorously, seriously, candidly – as they hadn’t allowed themselves to do in years. They rediscovered each other – with words and also with touch, kiss and caress. For the first time, he kissed the mole on her inner thigh and she trembled for him.

Brandon could have stayed there all day, in that tiny, colorful apartment, but in the afternoon, they finally dragged themselves out into the sunshine and the fog of San Francisco. A day’s vacation from reality. 

“You know you don’t have to have everything figured out right away,” Callie said to him at one point, as they stood at the edge of land and looked out across the Bay. “You’ve got time.”

Later, he’d find he couldn’t recall the context of her comment. Perhaps it had been in response to telling her that he was planning to quit law school. Perhaps it had been in reference to something else entirely. Later, however, he’d find that her comment seemed to encapsulate a bigger truth.

*

When Brandon sends a zip file of pictures called ‘Callie’s first show’ to his moms, he leaves one photo out. It’s innocuous. A shot of Callie on a boat ride, sunlight hitting the side of her face, ocean breeze lifting her hair. She’s squinting and smiling into the lens. You could look at that picture and think nothing of it. The official story is a simple one: Callie showing her brother the Bay on a tourist boat.

The other story is less simple: she’s not just smiling, she’s smiling at _him_ , and for the first time in seven years, neither of them are pretending.

 _We’ve got time_ , he thinks, looking at the photo. _We’ve got time to figure things out. To find a way to be together._

**Author's Note:**

>  **Muse music:** ‘Howl’ by The Gaslight Anthem.


End file.
